Here's the answer we just received from a de Blasio spokesperson:

Given the MTA’s current fiscal outlook, Public Advocate de Blasio believes that our City and State have to make tough choices. The Governor and the State Legislature should not reduce payroll taxes while forcing the City to pay more than its fair share, especially since upstate communities also benefit from the MTA. We should look at other options such as stimulus funding, weight based registration fees or reviving Speaker Silver’s proposal to impose bridge tolls that are tied to the cost of subway fares. But over the long term the MTA must be more accountable and responsible with managing its budget.

Perhaps the "Mobility Tax" should be renamed in honor of Lew Fidler and Carl Kruger.

Despite the fact that the MTA's commuter rail lines, which keep suburban roads from turning into parking lots, are already more heavily subsidized than the subway, we are poised to enact a policy that will lessen the burden on the suburbs and hit the core of the region's economy the hardest.

Are bridge tolls or congestion pricing an option right now? The window to prevent this particular transit catastrophe by putting a price on wasteful driving probably isn't open any longer -- the revenue stream couldn't start flowing fast enough to balance the MTA's books. And the fact is, the same State Senate crew who killed bridge tolls last spring is still in power, and we're nine months closer to election day.

So think of the New York City payroll tax hike, if it comes to pass, as a testament to the obstinacy of Carl Kruger, Pedro Espada, Ruben Diaz, Sr., and the disgraced Hiram Monserrate -- as well as their GOP counterparts like Marty Golden and Andrew Lanza who sat idly by and did nothing to help the Ravitch plan last year.

Nine months after these NYC-based State Senators killed bridge tolls and nearly two years after members of the city's Assembly delegation stopped congestion pricing in its tracks, we now face the distinct possibility that NYC businesses will end up shouldering more than three times the payroll tax rate as suburban businesses. Think back to all the city politicians you've heard float make-believe proposals about reinstating the commuter tax or making only non-NYC motorists pay bridge tolls. This new tax on New York City -- on their constituents -- is their handiwork too.

When Albany slapped a Band-Aid over the MTA budget hole last spring, no one except the architects of the plan pretended that the transit system was actually on sound financial footing. As yet another day of reckoning approaches, lawmakers continue to go to bizarre extremes to avoid admitting that their slipshod funding package has failed.

Though hailing from opposite sides of the aisle, Golden and Espaillat agree: Albany has done its part for city transit riders. Photos: Village Voice/Grand Street News

In describing proposed cuts as "a serious threat by the MTA to get the state legislature to act," Golden seems be acknowledging, in a weird, circular manner, that it’s up to him and his colleagues to properly fund the transit system. But beyond his plan to "call a town hall meeting," what has he brought to the table that would help his constituents who rely on MTA buses and trains?

In the arena of head-spinning nonsensery, Golden has to take a back seat to Adriano Espaillat. As reported in the Manhattan Times, at an event to promote those free student MetroCards that Albany chose to stop funding -- hosted by City Council member, protege, and fellow road pricing critic Ydanis Rodriguez -- the senator from Upper Manhattan unloaded this whopper:

Espaillat said the state government had already filled a hole in the MTA’s budget in the fall, and the authority should find another way to balance its books.

“We gave them money. They should fix our trains. … We gave them money to do that. But we don’t want them to take money about from our children,” he said.

He said he believes threatening the cuts are just a bargaining chip to get the city or state to fill the budget shortfalls of the authority, similar to the 2008-2009 threat to toll East River bridges.

“We stopped them and we can stop them again,” he said.

In other words, Espaillat is boasting that he stopped a funding stream that would have helped "fix our trains."

Contemplating the demise of the M line -- a.k.a. his ride to work -- John Petro of the Drum Major Institute has a piece over at the Huffington Post that plainly lays out Albany's choice: make drivers pay their share for a transit system that reduces traffic, helps the environment, and powers the region's economy, or subject all New Yorkers to a future that resembles the dark days of the city's past.

Estimated fine particle concentrations in winter 2008-2009

In a first of its kind report for the city, the Department of Health has issued a wake-up call for New Yorkers of all stripes: Car and truck traffic is killing us, in more ways than one.

Collecting ground-level samples at 150 sites for a community air quality study conducted last winter [PDF], researchers measured for five pollutants emitted by vehicles and buildings. Among the findings: People in areas with higher traffic densities are subjected to higher levels of particulates (27 percent greater), elemental carbon (45 percent greater), and nitrogen dioxide (37 percent greater) than those in areas with less traffic. In addition to triggering allergies and other illnesses that lead to more hospitalizations and work absences, exposure to these toxins has been linked to heart diseases, lung diseases, and cancer.

While the effects on Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side make for compelling headlines, neighborhoods that get far less media play but are nonetheless saddled with crushing cut-through traffic, highway traffic and truck traffic, like Washington Heights and Hunts Point, are also hit hard.

"It confirms what we've known anecdotally," says Miquela Craytor of Sustainable South Bronx. In addition to regional traffic on the Bruckner Expressway, tens of thousands of trucks travel to and from Hunts Point weekly. Local residents, for the most part, are collateral damage. "The majority of folks in the Bronx aren't driving to go to work in Manhattan."

Sustainable South Bronx is a member of the COMMUTE coalition, steadfast advocates for congestion pricing and BRT. "Things such as congestion pricing are a great tool that can lead to some behavioral changes that are necessary," Craytor says. "The other thing that certainly needs to happen is that we invest in our transit system. The Bronx still is underserved in many areas."

Hat tip to Ben Kabak at Second Avenue Sagas for plucking this graph from yesterday's urgent session of the MTA finance committee. It charts where the money comes from for New York City's free and discount student transit passes -- of which there are more than half a million. And it says a lot about the transit funding mess we're in today.

The cost of the student fare program, which the MTA is proposing to phase out as it attempts to close a startling $383 million budget shortfall, has been increasingly shouldered by the transit agency as contributions from the city and state flat-lined, with the state's share dropping precipitously this year.

Before 1995, the city and state covered student fares, according to the Regional Plan Association. Then each scaled back contributions to $45 million per year, and this year the state dropped its share down to a meager $6 million. As the RPA said in a statement today, "You would be hard pressed to find another transit agency in the country that shoulders the burden of school transit passes."

By threatening to phase out free student fares, the MTA has highlighted a very clear cut and politically sensitive case where the city and state haven't held up their end of the transit funding bargain. Sound familiar? In the weeks ahead, we're going to hear a lot about how to stave off disastrous service cuts, but without a new revenue stream -- like congestion pricing or bridge tolls -- nothing will change the essential fact that the MTA is working on borrowed time.

"In my personal view, we have been eating our seed corn and we face terrible terribly difficult choices," Ravitch said. "Not moral choices. Political choices, social choices of unprecedented variety... You're talking about cutting, not just fat, talking about cutting to the bone."

If he's right, and he probably is, the MTA budget will take yet another whack next year. This is a big problem since the agency is already likely to cut service in 2010 to pay for the shortfalls it had to absorb in 2009. The under-performing MTA payroll tax, which is hugely unpopular in the suburbs, only aggravates an already bad situation.

The really big underlying problem is that regardless of how much the MTA cuts service, it faces rapid increases in "uncontrollable costs" like pensions, health care and Access-A-Ride. These unfunded legislative mandates exert a huge drag on the agency, which is partly what Mayor Bloomberg alluded to yesterday when he called the MTA a "piggy bank."

The net result is that without a new source of funding, the MTA will soon run out of money and options. Let's take it for granted the MTA will be forced by Albany to engage in desperate new financial sleight-of-hand and "seed corn eating" (capital money going to operating expenses, borrowing against future fare hikes). Let's further assume the MTA will have to accelerate the fare hikes planned for 2011. If this comes to pass, in about a year the MTA will be out of options and have to cut service so harshly that even Albany will be forced to care.

It will be a political slug fest worth watching. How deep will service have to be cut before the East and Harlem River bridges are tolled? Are tolls dead, or are they actually inevitable?

All told, about $830 million has been spent repairing the bridge, which suffered from neglect during the city’s financial crisis in the 1970s, said Brian Gill, the chief engineer of Manhattan Bridge reconstruction for the Transportation Department.

As long as there's no price on these bridges, we all pay for those free rides.

Last night at the Council District 1 candidates debate, in the "lightning round" (one-line answers), a question was "Grand St. bike lane: good or bad."

All the candidates came out strongly against it to the cheers of some in the crowd. Only PJ Kim, the last to comment, tempered his statement with, "but we must not demonize bikers." They all either flatly opposed congestion pricing or want carve-outs for residents (pandering, hmmm?) and opposed East River tolls.

On the congestion pricing question (about 1:31:00 into this audio file posted on the Lo-Down), Pete Gleason and Alan Gerson were the two to outright oppose the idea -- although the incumbent Gerson voted for pricing last year. Margaret Chin, the only candidate to express any support for bridge tolls (check the 1:32:00 mark), qualified her answer by saying that car-poolers should be exempt.

Any exemption for congestion pricing or bridge tolls, of course, opens the door to more exemptions. The first people who will take advantage? Exactly the same placard-holders whom District 1 candidates rightly blame for clogging downtown streets.

We're talking about a district that is absolutely pummeled by bridge traffic, where about 80 percent of the households don't own a car. Those who do own one earn nearly two-and-a half times those who don't, on average [PDF]. There was a great opportunity here for a savvy candidate to separate from the pack on livable streets issues. And yet, no one chose to grab it.

Ed Fay: time-polluter and proud of it. Photo: Daily News.

I decided that I'm not going to give the transicrats another cent to get to and from work. The MTA has stuck it to all of us countless times over the years and now it was time for me to pay them back. I will personally screw them out of $1,000 over the next year.

The ironies are many. For one thing, Fay could offset that toll hike three times over by signing up with E-ZPass, but he swears by cash. For another, since straphangers are a big part of the dwindling market for the daily paper, you could say that Fay’s rebellion undermines his employer by shrinking NYC Transit's take from the toll revenues. There’s also the fact that in stiffing the MTA Fay is paying a stiff price in lost time; by his own estimate, detouring around the tolls adds 15 minutes each way to his commute. As one Streetsblog commenter pointed out, Fay implicitly values his own commuting time at not much more than the minimum wage.

But Fay’s biggest grotesquerie is his obliviousness to the consequences of his commute for other drivers. By my estimation, an average 11-mile rush-hour car trip into the Manhattan Central Business District and back out again creates three to four hours of aggregate delays to all the other people trying to get around in cars, trucks and buses on the same roads at the same time. (With the recessionary drop in traffic, that figure is currently somewhat lower, but it’s also higher in Fay’s case if most of his return trips take place in the p.m. peak.)

By choosing to car-commute daily into the CBD, Mr. Screw-the-MTA is mostly screwing his fellow drivers.

And this is true whether Fay drives on local streets or ponies up the $3 bridge toll ($2.09 with E-ZPass). To be sure, those three to four hours of delay are spread among thousands of drivers, no one of which loses more than 10 or 20 seconds queued behind Fay’s automobile at each stoplight or highway ramp. And his contribution to traffic delays is no greater than that of anyone else who drives in the same places at the same time.

What’s different is Fay’s glee. He’s spewing pollution, not so much from his tailpipe (autos rank relatively low in emissions these days), but "time pollution," by stealing precious minutes and seconds from his fellow New Yorkers. And he’s proud of it:

Each night I add $6 to the pile. And when the pile gets to $1,000 -- about eight months from now -- I'll take my family out for a spectacular dinner and raise a glass toasting the bloated bums at the MTA and the toll increase that sent me over the edge.

Fay's bluster notwithstanding, I’ll wager that after the big blowout he'll tire of rat-running and revert to the toll bridge. After all, even if he makes “just” $100,000 a year at the News and values his commute time at only half his imputed hourly pay, he’s still trading $12.50 worth of time each day to save a measly $6.00. But that return to sanity won’t solve the systemic dysfunction by which anyone choosing to make a single car-trip to and from the CBD can impose $100 in societal delay costs but pay just $5 or $10 in tolls themselves.

What Fay confronts us with is nothing less than the moral imperative of congestion pricing. Decisions that impose large delay costs on others demand commensurate charges. These need not begin at full-price. Congestion fees on the order of one-tenth of the full cost, as Ted Kheel and I propose (with revenues allocated to benefit transit), would be an excellent start. Let Ed Fay, time-polluter, pay.

We wondered a few months back why Upper Manhattan Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, a supporter of congestion pricing, would side with the usual suspects in opposing Ravitch-backed East and Harlem River bridge tolls. At the time, Espaillat told Streetsblog readers that new tolls would place an unfair burden on his district, and blamed MTA financial woes on "contemptible bookkeeping and abject failure to control spending."

Et tu, Adriano? Photo: Brad Aaron

At a "town hall" meeting in Inwood last Thursday, Streetsblog reader Peter Brinkmann again found the assemblyman indifferent to concerns about auto-inflicted quality of life issues. Writes Peter:

In response to my question about distorted traffic patterns caused by car commuters who take the Broadway bridge [into and out of Inwood] in order to avoid paying the toll for Henry Hudson Bridge, he launched into his usual routine about how East River bridge tolls would be a regressive tax on families; he didn't address the issue of a residential neighborhood serving as a bypass for a major artery. When asked about possibly repaving 218th Street, he seemed to be in favor, in part because 218th Street draws a lot of traffic from drivers who want to avoid Henry Hudson Bridge. In other words, he's aware of distorted traffic patterns and doesn't seem to have a problem with them.

Peter says Espaillat "dismissed the upcoming MTA fare hike as nothing more than a regular increase and didn't address the bigger problem of service cuts." If you're confused as to how a representative from a district where 80 percent of the population relies on transit could be so disconnected, here is Espaillat on the subject of planned improvements to two Inwood 1 train elevated platforms:

When talking about the upcoming renovation of the Dyckman and 207th St stations, he kept talking about the "1 and 9" trains. That might just be some NY verbal tic, like having to say "Z" after saying "J," but I suspect that he doesn't take the subway and hasn't noticed that the 9 train has gone the way of the dodo.

Based on Espaillat's performance during and since the doomsday debacle, we wouldn't be surprised.

In 1909, wrote the Times, tolls on the brand new Queensboro Bridge were temporarily suspended for a "touring contest" on Long Island, described as "an enjoyable diversion for a great many New York and Brooklyn motorists."

All four city bridges had tolls in the early 1900's, including one for pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge. But they were abolished in 1911 under Mayor William J. Gaynor, who called them ''inconvenient and irksome'' and declared, ''For my part, I see no more reason for tollgates on the bridges than for tollgates on Fifth Avenue or Broadway.''

Gaynor, a one-time Tammany favorite and apparent inspiration to future city leaders, was also opposed to expansion of the subway system, according to his official bio. In 1910, Gaynor was shot in the throat by a disgruntled city employee, an injury that would end his life three years later. Months after the attack, the mayor ordered the East River bridges to go toll-free, recounted Aaron Naparstek in 2006, prompting speculation in local transpo circles of a link between the two incidents:

While "there's never been a serious connection drawn between the assassination attempt and Gaynor's tolling policy," says former Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, "I'm suspicious."

Check out Aaron's full post, written upon the advent of the city's latest congestion pricing debate, for more on the sordid, sometimes violent, and seemingly interminable struggle to preserve the privileges of New York's motoring class.

In this scene from last night's State Senate vote on the MTA funding package, Fare Hike Four member Ruben Diaz, Sr. relishes his substantial influence over the final bill:

Today I'm standing here proud to say to my constituents. I promise you, constituents of the 32nd senatorial district, no toll.

That would be the asthma-plagued Bronx district where 67 percent of the households don't own cars [PDF] and the transit-riding majority endures the most crowded, cramped conditions in the city. Thanks to the intransigence of Diaz and company on bridge tolls, it's going to be much tougher to improve commutes for straphangers in the 32nd.

Here's a taste of what New Yorkers can expect as a direct result. Neighborhoods will suffer from heavier traffic as more drivers opt to take free bridges. Bus riders will sit through slower rides and worse gridlock. Straphangers will absorb more of the cost of transit through higher fares. And the long-term health of the transit system will remain a big question mark.

We've emerged on the other side of the immediate crisis, but the big problems that led there in the first place are still staring us right in the face. To paraphrase Governor Paterson, responsibility has been shirked to live for another day.

I stole the title of this post from Mikhail Gorbachev, who saw the writing on the wall for the USSR in 1985. Like the Soviet empire in the 1980s, New York City's transportation system is groaning under the combined weight of skewed incentives and stale political leadership. Instead of bread lines, we have traffic jams and drivers cruising endlessly for parking spots. Like the special privileges handed out to Communist Party apparatchiks, we bestow our public servants with parking placards and toll perks. The Eastern Bloc had the Kremlin. We have Albany.

Which is where this analogy breaks down. No one in Soviet Russia ever voted for the Glasnost candidate. One day, the head of the Communist Party just decided that something had to change. Well, as we've witnessed over the last 12 agonizing months, a decision from on high won't get it done in New York, not as long as the Carl Krugers remain in Albany. You see where I'm headed. Like Aaron said back in March, reforming transportation policy is now, above all, an electoral project:

Sustainable transport advocates need to build political clout. Period. At this point, almost nothing else matters.

Now that Governor Paterson has backtracked on his pledge to secure a long-term solution to New York's transit funding crisis, the push is on to spin the slapdash result as a responsible outcome, not a capitulation to Albany's lowest common denominator.

Courtesy of Liz Benjamin, here's Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith emerging from last night's closed-door session with the two Long Island legislators who will presumably give him the 32 votes needed to pass a bill:

I think it is a tribute to them, and a tribute to this Democratic conference. Reform is what everybody wanted. Everybody said that you should have a legislature where the rank-and-file members have a right to speak their mind, and have input -- and not only have input but get some results.

Never mind that all the negotiating for this deal took place behind closed doors. Or that the plan Smith's conference concocted does not reduce the MTA's dependence on debt financing. Or that the band of senators who derailed the viable plan drawn up by the Ravitch Commission are the same group who held the Democratic takeover of the Senate hostage last year, in return for more lucrative and powerful committee chairmanships.

Sure, rank-and-file legislators need a more open, transparent process in Albany, but letting the Fare Hike Four dictate the agenda hardly qualifies as reform, or sound policymaking.

Fortunately, the city's editorial boards aren't buying it. The Times, the Daily News, and the Post unanimously slammed the framework that Smith, Paterson, and, one assumes, Sheldon Silver will now sign off on, because it doesn't fund the MTA capital plan -- the vital maintenance and improvements necessary to the transit system's long-term health.

Under the Ravitch framework, the payroll tax would have funded those long-term investments, and car commuters would have helped to plug the MTA's operating deficit through bridge tolls. The Smith/Paterson framework uses the payroll tax to plug the deficit, asks nothing of car commuters (who benefit enormously from a robust transit network), and leaves the capital plan unfunded.

Our transit system risks collapse, in other words, because Albany can't muster the will to charge drivers. That is the core storyline in the ongoing MTA funding saga -- not "reform" -- and it has to change.

Seeking a quick resolution to the MTA funding crisis, Governor Paterson lobbied over the weekend to get a Band-aid fix through the State Senate. The problem is, Paterson's plan provides no resolution at all. Fundamental details of the proposal are still sketchy, even as the governor pushes for a vote as soon as today, but there's no doubt that the numbers don't add up to a healthy transit system. Consider:

• The revenue streams in Paterson's plan keep shrinking while the MTA's operating deficit keeps growing, meaning that further fare hikes and service cuts will be necessary in a matter of months.
  
• All indications are that the latest proposal would direct zero dollars to the MTA capital plan, the five-year package of maintenance and expansion projects that is still completely unfunded.
  

By pushing for a stopgap measure on the Senate Democrats' terms, Paterson has effectively abandoned the framework laid out by the Ravitch Commission. His proposal does not share the funding burden equitably -- car commuters pay nothing to keep congestion-busting trains and buses running. Nor does it address long-term funding needs, risking system-wide decline by leaving even routine maintenance unpaid for.

Observers are in the dark about the most basic aspects of the governor's proposal, like how much it would raise in total. Does the plan still fund upstate roads and bridges with a surcharge on New York City cab fares? Will service cuts still be necessary even if this plan passes? It's hard to tell when all the discussions take place behind closed doors.

Advocates aren't pleased. The Empire State Transportation Alliance -- a coalition representing business, labor, and environmental groups -- released a statement yesterday stressing the importance of funding the MTA capital plan now, not just passing a temporary fix. 

"In light of what has transpired as well as what has failed to happen to date, we have little confidence that the Governor and Legislature will be able to come together to address the urgent capital needs of the MTA once such a band-aid is applied," said ESTA co-chair Kevin Corbett in a statement.

Delaying action on the capital plan will also affect transit service down the line, because debt payments come out of the MTA's operating budget. "The two are very closely related," RPA's Neysa Pranger told Streetsblog. "A good part of the reason they're in the operating deficit now is that they had to borrow to pay for the capital plan. By 2012, debt service will eat up 20 percent of the MTA's operating budget. If you don't do the capital piece now, you run the risk of driving the system into the ground, or the MTA continues to borrow a lot of money which puts additional pressure on fares and service. It's all part of the same picture."

Politically, passing a sound plan will only get tougher from here on out, as the 2010 elections draw closer. "The MTA will be very constrained by the election cycle," said Pranger, noting that the agency will soon have another budget shortfall on its hands, but the money to cover it probably won't come from fare hikes. "It's happened before, Pataki would give the MTA these one-shots -- payments out of the general fund. The legislature has got to be wary of the fuzzy math right now, and demand some answers about where the money's going, before voting on anything."

Lately, however, to the chagrin of some of his constituents, including yours truly, Schneiderman hasn't had much to say about the MTA, focusing instead on other (not inconsequential) issues as transit-riding New Yorkers teeter on the brink of doomsday. I contacted Schneiderman's office early this week and asked about MTA rescue -- specifically, whether the senator supports Malcolm Smith's taxi surcharge bill (set for a Tuesday vote at that point), or if he prefers a plan closer to the Ravitch proposal, including tolls on East and Harlem River bridges. This was the response:

Senator Schneiderman is fully committed to finding a solution that will both address the MTA’s fiscal crisis and gain the necessary votes in the Senate. As has been covered by the media, the details of the bailout have been a controversial matter. In the end, thirty-two senators must vote in favor of a bill. Up to this point, there have not been 32 Senators — including both Democrats and Republicans — who have been willing to support a particular proposal. However, Senator Schneiderman is confident that a plan will get worked out soon — a Senate bill has already been introduced this week — which will finally gain the necessary votes.

Considering Schneiderman's history of telling it like it is on this subject, this is a deeply unsatisfying answer. In fact, it's a non-answer, a mere summary of what one could read in most any local newspaper any day of the week, along with a platitudinous assurance that a workable plan is on its way -- and we all know what that means.

Streetsbloggers have repeatedly called on Manhattan's Senate delegation to take a strong position in favor of an MTA rescue package that at least resembles the Ravitch proposal -- a sensible, equitable plan that addresses traffic congestion while providing a sustainable transit revenue stream. Sadly, for those of us who were hoping Eric Schneiderman might respond to that call, it seems we need to turn elsewhere.

Says TA:

Rally-goers will hear from fellow riders whose bus and subway lines are about to disappear, as well as from labor and transportation advocates. They will make phone calls to their State Senators, and handwrite messages to the NY State Senate on a giant "Facebook Wall," conveying what fare hikes and service cuts will mean for their commutes. The wall will be hand-delivered to Senate leadership.

This event is likely to draw media coverage, so if anyone who's planning to attend is able to bring pro-bridge toll signs it could be a good way to show that members of the transit-riding public -- unlike state lawmakers -- aren't ready to concede on the merits.

We were half-kidding last week when we said state legislators were open to taxing anything from pet food to shoelaces as long as they could say they had saved the MTA, and as long as drivers could continue to cross East and Harlem River bridges at no cost. Turns out it's no joke after all, according to Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith.

Following another futile secret meeting late yesterday with his Assembly counterpart Sheldon Silver and Governor David Paterson, Smith acknowledged that at this point any revenue source will do. The Politicker reports:

"It's not about merits," Smith said. "It's just about what gets us there with the votes that we need to get it passed. Because there are things in this plan that, somebody's not going to like something. At some point, you just have to sort of toughen up a little bit and make the tough decisions."

"It's not about merits" goes a long way toward explaining Smith's proposal to substitute bridge tolls with a taxi surcharge, a scheme that by one columnist's count has the support of Smith, Carl Kruger, and no one else. It could also serve to sum up Smith's idea of "reform" in Albany, at least as it applies to the MTA funding crisis. Consider his comments when The Fare Hike Four unveiled their cockamamie plan.

Liz Benjamin asked Smith whether the fact that the new plan clearly represents the thinking of the old Gang of Three was a sign of his own weakness. He said it was just part of the "paradigm shift."

"Quite frankly, I would hope my members are strong enough and will try to drive agendas," Smith said. "This is a Democratic conference, this is not a Malcolm conference."

"I encourage them: go ahead with the Gang of Three, do your thing."

As for toughening up, Smith could stand to heed his own advice. Ignoring the merits in an effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator isn't hard. Nor is it particularly virtuous to preach transparency and reform while hiding behind closed doors.

When it comes to MTA rescue, it's past time to make the tough decisions. Straphangers are still waiting to see if the new leader of the Senate has it in him.

WFP director Dan Cantor (center) at a "Halt the Hike" rally last week. Photo: Working Families Party.

If there was any doubt before, now it should be clear: The latest transit rescue package proposed by Malcolm Smith is too skimpy to get the job done. By refusing to ask car commuters to shoulder any of the burden, the plan Smith put forward would merely postpone the day of reckoning for straphangers.

Tomorrow the State Senate is expected to vote on that plan, or some variation on it. For months obstructionist senators have excused their own inaction by pointing fingers at the MTA for what they deem a lack of transparency. But now the Senate might pass a transit funding package without holding any public hearings whatsoever. How opaque is that? The utter lack of transparency or discussion about this latest plan should be enough to preclude any votes from senators looking to burnish their good government cred.

The new budget numbers also set the stage for tomorrow's big rally in Union Square, where the Working Families Party and transportation advocates will gather to protest the doomsday fare hike and service cuts. The Senate's proposal is a band-aid that won't deliver what this coalition demands: a long-term, sustainable revenue stream that will protect straphangers from paying more for a deteriorating transit system. A real remedy, like the Ravitch plan, needs a united front behind it in order to regain momentum. This rally must be a galvanizing moment, and the person best positioned to deliver is Dan Cantor, head of the labor-backed Working Families Party.

Here's a chance for the Working Families Party to make a strong push for a robust transit plan. A plan that will put the city's subway and bus systems on sound footing. A plan that will spare working New Yorkers from worse fare hikes and deteriorating service.

Car commuters are one constituency asked to sacrifice next to nothing in the Senate's latest proposal, even though the average income of the city's car owners more than doubles that of the transit-riding, car-free majority. The official position of the Working Families Party is that the MTA funding plan should be "based on the Ravitch principles." Coming out with a more forceful position at tomorrow's rally -- like a full-fledged endorsement of the Ravitch plan itself, including bridge tolls -- could change the terms of the debate.

"I spoke to Dick Ravitch again this morning - just a few minutes ago - he does not believe that the current plan that the Albany Senate has proposed will do what is necessary and that is provide a stable inflation link source of funds adequate for the MTA to keep the fares from jumping up dramatically and to be not be faced with this issue every few months," Bloomberg told reporters (including the DN's Kate Lucadamo) during a Q&A in the Bronx this morning.

"...I’m a little bit bothered by a proposal that would put a taxi fare surcharge on here in the city to build roads upstate," the mayor continued. "New York City already sends more money to Albany than we get back, we are fundamentally the economic engine of the state and we subsidize it."

Liz Benjamin writes that Bloomberg "thinks the best plan of action would be to go back to square one" -- the original Ravitch proposal -- but that he could get behind Sheldon Silver's version, which also includes tolls on East River bridges.

"It is going to have to be something along those lines. And these compromises where they keep trying to get votes by changing the formula for every different place, it leads to a piece of legislation that doesn’t really accomplish what we want."

The Senate bill was introduced yesterday. It's not clear where Majority Leader Malcolm Smith plans to get the votes to pass it.